Let's just get this one out of the way first:

Who spent a very, very long time studying the aspects, characteristics and reactions of humanity?

>>climate change was denied by millions

Let's just go back 14 years and see what happened, that we didn't expect, to utterly change the world.

9/11

The corruption of the filibuster is one that comes to mind. They shouldn't have changed it so you can sit on your butt and eat and sandwich while "filibustering". Imho.

We seem to excel at inheriting flawed systems and then finding ways to make them even worse before we pass them on to the next generation.

I think they'll also look at our economic system and wonder that too.

The same thing we're b##$hing about now. — City/Road infrastructure:

We are not even trying to get off the stuff, are we?

Any/all.

Hah!

Poor reinvesting in education. My peers, at work this morning, showed shocking ignorance of even basic scientific concepts when I was talking about interesting science articles; one man had me explain the concept of inertia to him. To his credit, he understood my explanation, but a 50 year old man did not know what…

Doesn't capitalism encourage infinite growth?

You should also wear a paper mask of one of the blu team on top of that.

So many folks of the modern era. I think Sci-fi was saved far before that by this person:

Lupin and Tonks with Shepherd Book a close second.

I rather like Pratchett's interpretation. There's a lot more to it than this, but I rather like the Law of Conservation of Reality: 'it takes the same effort to do something with magic as it would to do it mundanely'.